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The Poet And The Advocate
By James Williams
Glory and gain thus mixed distract the thought,
We owe to honour all, to fortune nought;
The poet, like the soldier, scorns for pay
Peruvian gold, but seeks the wreath of bay.
How is the advocate the poet's peer?
The poet's glory is complete and clear;
He far outlives the advocate's renown,
Patru is e'en by Scarron's name weighed down.
The bar of Greece and Rome you point me out,
A bar that trained great men, I do not doubt,
For then chicane with language void of sense
Had not deformed the law and eloquence.
Purge the tribune of all this monstrous growth,
I mount it, and my soul will sink, though loth,
Will yield to fortune and will speak in prose.
But since reform in this so slowly grows,
Leave me my tastes, for I aspire to be
By verse ennobled to posterity,
To hold first place in arts above the law,
More grave and noble than it ever saw.
Fraud in this age of ours unpunished can
Tread down the equity so dear to man.
Can you for spirits just and generous find
A fairer cause to plead before mankind?
Mother or stepmother let Fortune be,
The theatre and not the bar for me;
For client virtue, truth for counsel's wage;
For judge the present and the coming age.
Piron, La Métromanie, Act iii. Sc. 7.
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